


Triple Threat

by Marsalias



Series: Phic Phight 2020 [15]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Gen, Halfa Trio AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23906428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marsalias/pseuds/Marsalias
Summary: Scenes from the half-lives of three teenage half-ghosts.
Series: Phic Phight 2020 [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685794
Comments: 22
Kudos: 324
Collections: Phic Phight!





	Triple Threat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betelgeuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betelgeuse/gifts).



Three sets of screams echoed off the polished steel walls of the Fentonworks lab.

.

It was green, and they were filled with a horrible anxiety. Something bad had happened, or something bad might have happened, they couldn't tell which. Their mind was too stricken with pain, fear, and exhaustion to register anything but _green_ and _they were in danger._

Who? Who was in danger? They were important to them. They couldn't remember anything else. Couldn't think.

They moved and-

Contact. _Relief._ They could feel them, the others, and they were, well, they were hurt, but they were alive, and they were _here._ Together.

They relaxed. This was... not fine. Anything but fine, really. But it was manageable.

Unconsciousness draped back over them.

.

When they woke again, they knew themselves. Danny, Sam, Tucker. But the boundaries _blurred._ They were almost erased, and this was wrong, because they should be three, not one.

But it also felt right to be one. It was odd, and it made things difficult. Difficult to remember where they were, what they were, who they were.

Why they were.

Right. Why were they here? How had they gotten there? They knew, they knew that, but like this, their thoughts and feelings clashing against each other, it was beyond them. They couldn't even move effectively, always mistaking one hand for another. They had six of them, all together, and that was far too many.

They had to separate. At least for now, at least until they could get their feet under them.

They were fairly confident that this one was Danny. Yes. This one was Danny. He was Danny. Danny.

Danny sat up with a groan, feeling like he had just woken up from a dream. A dream where he'd been beaten to heck and back with a baseball bat that was on fire. His chest felt strange. Light and cold.

Why was everything green?

Then he remembered. The portal. The pain. The screaming. The screaming. The screaming.

Sam and Tucker had been with him. That thought forced him into a sitting position. Where were Sam and Tucker? What had happened to them?

Were they alive?

Danny had certainly thought that _he_ was dying.

But, to his relief, he saw a Sam-shaped blur and a Tucker-shaped blur in the green mists, moving much like he was: gingerly. With little more than grunts, the three of them negotiated a position where they could support each other and stumble out of the portal.

That's when they saw each other, and things started to get _really_ weird.

.

They sat in Danny's room and took their pulses.

"I think," said Sam, "that we can agree that we're alive."

"So, what was that?" asked Tucker. "That..." He flexed his hands and everyone understood he meant that other form, where they wore black jumpsuits and white gloves, where their hair was white and their eyes brilliant green. "Was it temporary? Just a side effect?"

"No," said Danny, putting a hand over his chest, just below his heart. The others mimicked the motion. "Don't you feel it? We're different now."

They all looked down.

"It could still be temporary?" said Tucker. "That could fade, too. I mean, we look like ourselves again."

"But you don't really believe that, do you?" asked Sam.

"No," admitted Tucker. "But it's still a possibility."

"Oh my gosh," moaned Danny, putting his head in his hands. "Mom and Dad... I can't be dead. I can't be a ghost. They're going to _kill_ me... _us,_ " he added with more horror.

Sam and Tucker moved to either side of Danny, leaning into him.

"We'll deal with it together," said Sam. Whatever was inside them seemed to hum in agreement.

.

"Duck!" shouted Sam.

The words seemed to echo inside Danny's head, and he reflexively obeyed, barely missing the giant meat fist. Tucker took advantage of the opening, with a punch that did far more damage than it had any right to.

Things were... going. The poorly refrigerated meat dungeon beneath the school would probably need to be repaired, but, on the upside, the ghost wasn't hurting anyone.

Except for Danny, Sam, and Tucker.

But then, as these things happen, everything went wrong all at once. Sam and Tucker both lost hold of their ghost forms, as Danny had earlier, and they fell.

Danny decided that now was the time to be somewhere else. He grabbed them and they phased through the wall.

Then Danny... just... slowly...

.

"Danny! Thank goodness you're awake!" exclaimed Tucker. "You've been asleep for three days!"

"Uhuh," said Danny, glaring at his friend through sleep-crusted eyes. "You remember that we can tell when each other is lying now, right?"

"Ah, well, it was worth a shot."

.

"Do you sense anything?" asked Sam.

"No," said Danny, tensely. They were wandering around the school basements, looking for the ghost. It was lunchtime, so if she was going to show up at all, it would be now.

"Man, I wish I had a ghost sensing power," said Tucker. He'd been put in charge of the 'Fenton Thermos,' a device whose utility was currently questionable. Even if it had glowed some really weird colors when the three of them touched it.

"Me too," said Sam. "Then we could split up and find this vegetable-hating ghost faster."

"WHO SAID I HATE VEGETABLES!?"

.

Danny picked up on the second ring.

"Hi, Sam," he said.

There was a bit of a pause on the other line. "How did you know it was me? You don't have caller ID."

"Tucker's here and who else is going to call our house? Mr. Lancer? One of Jazz's 'patients?'"

"Tucker's there? Oh, good."

"Yeah," said Danny. Tucker had stopped by and immediately got roped into helping with Danny's chore of cleaning the garage. "What's up? I thought you had a thing with your parents today. They were making you go to a party or something?"

"I found out who was throwing it and decided I'd rather die again. Can you guys come over?"

"Yeah," said Danny, mentally bracing himself for another scolding from his parents. But that was future Danny's problem. "One problem. Where do you even live?" The three of them were psychically bonded, and Danny had still never seen her house.

"Right, right. Do you have a pen? My address is-"

.

"So, Sam lives in a castle," said Danny, staring up at the enormous 'house.'

"Wow," said Tucker. "I wonder if she has a swimming pool in there somewhere."

"Or a bowling alley," said Danny.

"What is your thing with bowling, anyway, dude?"

"I don't know. I just like it."

"Where did Sam say she was again?"

"Greenhouse. Back yard."

"Cool," said Tucker. He rubbed his hands together.

"Are you okay?" asked Danny. Tucker had been fidgeting all night.

"Yeah, just..." Tucker sighed. "Your parents' tech feels weird. I don't know. It's been bugging me all day. It's like, I kept wanting to put my hands into it," he said, briefly making the offending limbs intangible to demonstrate.

"Maybe it's part of your thing?" suggested Danny. "We'll have to look into that."

"Yeah. But, later," said Tucker. "Phase through the wall?"

"I don't want to talk to her parents."

"True," said Tucker.

Invisible and intangible, they walked into Sam's back yard. The greenhouse was easy to find. It was however, impossible to open the door, and Sam didn't answer when they knocked, so they phased in.

"Wow," said Danny. "This is..."

"Crowded," finished Tucker. "Sam? You in here? We're here!"

"Yeah!" said Sam. "I'm back by the oranges!"

They walked around tables that practically dripped with greenery, following the scent of citrus. Sam was sitting at the roots of a large tree, hugging her knees. On closer inspection, it appeared that the tree's roots had burst out of a ceramic pot before burrowing into the ground.

"Sam?" said Danny. "Did you, um, do this?" he asked.

Sam's eyes were wide and wild. "Maybe?" she said.

.

They stood over the smoking pile of technology that had once been Technus's battlesuit. It sparked. Faintly glowing moss grew from it.

"Okay," said Danny, twisting the lid tighter. "I think we need to go over our powers again."

.

"Danny can sense ghosts, is best at basic ghostly stuff, and is the fastest flier, agreed?" asked Tucker, typing on his PDA.

"Agreed," chorused the other two.

"Sam can make plants grow faster, but only if there's a bunch of ectoplasm around, and she's not good at, like, turning invisible and intangible."

"To be fair," said Danny, "none of us are very good at that."

"True," said Sam, "but you two are definitely better than I am. But I'm stronger, too," she added, flexing her arms.

"Yeah, yeah," said Tucker. "Then, there's me, and everyone knows I'm fabulous."

They groaned.

"Stop that, you're making me groan, too," complained Tucker. "Anyway, it looks like my thing is charging and draining electronics, which is pretty cool. I'll never have to plug Cynthia in again. My baby is one step closer to life."

"We're begging you," said Sam, "stop naming your PDAs."

"I will not," said Tucker.

"Fine. Then you can't use my bowling alley."

"I _told_ you she might have a bowling alley."

.

"I've never wanted to kill somebody before," said Sam.

Danny shuddered, but he didn't say anything.

"But I wanted to kill him," she said. "I wanted to, so, so much, but I couldn't move. I couldn't do anything."

"But you did," said Danny, pressing against Sam's side and trying to project comforting thoughts. "You did do something. You broke free. Just like Tuck and I."

"Not soon enough," growled Sam, her eyes flashing.

"None of us broke free 'soon enough,'" said Tucker. He was playing with his glasses, turning the empty frames over in his hands again, and again, and again. "Do you _really_ not remember, Danny?"

"No?" said Danny. "Not really. Just red, and when he made Sam jump off the train, and Jazz coming after us." He frowned. "Maybe a bit in the tent? On the high wire?"

"I guess those are the highlights," mumbled Tucker.

Danny bit his lip. "Well," he said, finally. "It doesn't sound like a loss, anyway."

"No," agreed Sam, "it isn't."

.

After Danny left to go home, Sam and Tucker stayed. "Freakshow is a dead man if we ever see him again," she said.

"After what he did to Danny?" Tucker scoffed. "You better believe it."

.

"I hate Spectra so much," said Sam. "Why is she so... so..." She waved her hands. " _Why is she like this?"_

"Why is it in an abandoned hospital?" moaned Tucker.

"Probably because you told her last time that hospitals were your deepest darkest fear," said Danny. "Why did you do that, anyway? We were pretty sure she was a ghost already."

"Have you _seen_ what she looks like?"

.

Stars glimmered overhead. Danny laid flat on his back, watching them. Sam and Tucker were on either side of him.

"Can you believe," said Danny, "that one day we could put them out?"

"No," said Sam, immediately. "Because we're not going to."

"I didn't say, _would_ ," said Danny, his voice still soft. "I said, _could_. Those alternate realities... The ones where only one of us got powers... Where only I... Those were bad. Those were hard. I- I'm sorry."

"But we're together, here," said Tucker, soothingly, "and we're not going anywhere."

"I know," said Danny. "I'm sorry."

"What for?" asked the other two.

"That you had to half _die_ so I didn't blow up the world."

"Come on, man, you didn't blow up the world," said Tucker. "Just, you know, a bunch of the stuff on the world."

Danny let out a hiccuping laugh.

"And I was just as bad," said Sam. "I mean, I like plants, but that was no good."

"You were under mind control," protested Danny.

"So were you," countered Sam, "by Plasmius. It won't happen. None of them will happen. As long as Tucker quits trying to make Skynet and doesn't get assimilated into SkulkTech or whatever the heck that was, it'll all be fine."

"We might have to break his PDAs to stop _that._ "

"No, keep your cold hands away from my babies. I promise, no Skynet, no Skynet. I will leave the AI alone."

They fell back into silence.

"It's been a while since we've done this," said Danny. "Just hang out, I mean."

"Yeah," said Sam.

They inhaled, letting themselves feel each other. "It's nice," they said, together.


End file.
